Description

Developing Real Solutions to Major Problems in Three Days and then Compete to win the Grand Prize!

The STEAM Innovation Challenge is a one of a kind, intensive three-day weekend ideation event held in KAUST for university students. The first STEAM challenge was run over a weekend in April 2016 with sponsor the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) and involved 130 students from KAUST and four partner Saudi universities working in mixed, interdisciplinary teams to solve problems for IDB.

The next STEAM Innovation program will take place over a three-day weekend in January 2017 as part of the KAUST Winter Enrichment Program. This Challenge will involve up to 170 students from KAUST and six partnering Saudi universities. A corporate partner will sponsor the Challenge. It will also be a key part of the development of the STEAM Innovation Challenge in terms of giving students real world problems to solve and incentives for the winning teams in the competition part of the program. A team of mentors from the KAUST Entrepreneurship Center, other teams from Innovation & Economic Development and from the partner company will be on hand to help students during the challenge.

The objective for STEAM is that student teams will develop & present well-defined solutions to three major real world challenges developed in partnership with corporate partner in just three days. The Dow Chemical Company will also sponsor prizes the winning participating teams. The students chosen for this elite activity should have a background or expertise in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics.

Tags

Credited

Thu, Jan 19, 2017 [08:00 AM - 12:00 PM]

Thu, Jan 19, 2017 [02:00 PM - 04:00 PM]

Thu, Jan 19, 2017 [06:00 PM - 08:00 PM]

Fri, Jan 20, 2017 [08:00 AM - 08:00 PM]

Sat, Jan 21, 2017 [08:00 AM - 08:00 PM]

Amal Dokhan

Amal is a design thinker and a passionate professional in creating customer centric experiences. She guides established corporates and startups to create innovation & commercialization opportunities through customer focused creative solutions. Amal offers multiple workshops and lectures on Design Thinking following the Stanford D-School methodology and applying IDEO’s practical learning’s as she has experienced it in Stanford with an adaptation to the local market and a customized offering for the organization requirements and needs.

Throughout her career Amal gained a diversified range of experience in management and marketing related roles particularly in education and consultancy. Currently, Amal is part of the Entrepreneurship Center in King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in a number of roles including the New Ventures Accelerator & Hikma IP Startup Accelerator & REVelate Corporate Innovation program. Amal is also an entrepreneur, who started her own businesses, She was part of a joint venture with a startup in Dubai focused on creating media and production services for clients like Starcom Dubai, Yahoo Dubai and many others.

Gordon McConnell

As Head of the Entrepreneurship Center in KAUST since May 2014, Gordon has grown the activities of the center including the development of Teaching & Learning programs, startup accelerators such as the HIKMA IP-based and the REVelate corporate innovation program.

Prior to Saudi Arabia, he was the Associate Vice President of Arizona State University’s Entrepreneurship & Innovation Group (EIG) and Principal Investigator of the Center of Excellence in Technology Transfer, which was funded by the US department of defense, and an Assistant Professor of Practice. During his time in ASU, his group was ranked in the top 10 in the US for university incubators according to the UBI Global Index. While in ASU he developed several new innovation initiatives including the Furnace Technology Transfer Accelerator, which won the U.S. award for Most Promising Technology Based Economic Development in 2013. Previously Gordon was Deputy CEO of the DCU Ryan Academy for Entrepreneurship in Ireland where he developed new programs such as the Business Innovation Program (accredited) in 2011 and was the founder of the Propeller startup accelerator in 2010.